Working Paper: NBER ID: w15671
Authors: Yuyu Chen; Ginger Zhe Jin; Yang Yue
Abstract: We aim to quantify the role of social networks in job-related migration. With over 130 million rural labors migrating to the city each year, China is experiencing the largest internal migration in the human history. Using instrumental variables in the 2006 China Agricultural Census, we find that a 10-percentage-point increase in the migration rate of co-villagers raises one's migration probability by 7.27 percent points, an effect comparable to an increase of education by 7-8 years. Evidence suggests that most of this effect is driven by co-villagers helping each other in moving cost and job search at the destination.
Keywords: migration; social networks; China; instrumental variables
JEL Codes: J61; O12; R23
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| individual's likelihood of migrating (J61) | overcoming moving costs and job search challenges (J68) |
| covillagers assisting each other (P13) | individual's likelihood of migrating (J61) |
| migration patterns clustering (R23) | social networks facilitating migration (Z13) |
| migration rate of covillagers (R23) | individual's likelihood of migrating (J61) |
| gender of neighbors' firstborns (J19) | peer migration (F22) |
| number of male and female laborers in neighboring households (J21) | peer migration (F22) |